Christmas Carols Virgin Media One Sat 21 December 5.55am, VM3 Monday, 23 December, 9.30 am Singing superstar Alfie Boe leads the congregation of St Elisabeth’s Church in Greater Manchester in a traditional Christmas Eve carol service, with Nadine Coyle, and Alexander O’Neal. Renovation Nation Virgin Media One Sat 21 December, 11.30 am An old orchard…
The ‘right to die’ cause is a strange one – we’re all going to die eventually so that right will be vindicated by everybody anyway. It’s not about the freedom, as distinct from the right, to commit suicide as that is no longer illegal, so it’s really about the right to kill, but that’s rather…
Last week I heard and saw quite a few interesting items, most of which can be listened back to on the various web players. I relied on EWTN News Nightly for keeping in touch with the visit of Pope Francis to Japan and Thailand. On Monday of last week they reported his inspirational words at…
The Royal Family in Britain has been hitting the headlines recently and it’s not all good stuff. Coincidentally, I presume, the latest series of The Crown landed in its entirety on Netflix last week and I’m enjoying getting through it. First hurdle for the programme makers was to effect the transition of actors – especially…
We can get very parochial, and not in a good, value-your-parish kind of way. More and more I find this about so many aspects of Irish media, and public life in general. We think our issues are of global significance, sometimes a laughable hubris in the eyes of the universe. These thoughts were prompted by…
With the debate about married men becoming priests stirring it up at the Amazon Synod, we got to hear a somewhat related story closer to home last Friday. Nationwide (RTÉ1) featured the intriguing and uplifting story of Fr Seán Hyland from Portarlington. He married Liz, they had two children Seana and Ciaran, but sadly the…
Some TV programmes are nasty, some are forgettable fluff, some are enjoyable entertainment and some are hugely important. I’d put Children of the Troubles (RTÉ1, Monday) in that latter category. Presented by Joe Duffy, assisted by journalist Freya Clements, it outlined the stories of the children who died as a result of ‘the Troubles’. It…
Film footage of Catholic Ireland in the mid-20th Century can suggest a time that was grim and dour. But that’s not the full story – there was colour and joy too. I was impressed and entertained by the archive footage of old Dublin in Father Delaney: Silent Witness (RTÉ1, Thursday). Joe Duffy presented a fascinating…
Irish Catholic readers should be able to wallow in a bit of nostalgia! On Wednesday of last week I happened upon The Dick Powell Theatre on satellite movie channel Talking Pictures TV (TPTV). It was an innovative TV drama show in its day (early 1960s) – a TV series of one-off dramas. This particular episode…
A recurring line from the Twilight Zone movie came back to me last week: “You want to see something really scary?” Eugenics: Science’s Greatest Scandal (BBC4) over the last two Thursdays made for very scary viewing. We’re familiar with eugenics, pure race theory and the like from Nazi ideology, but the programmes showed that the seeds…